Defeat for a man of contradictions

Chief foreign correspondent

MITT ROMNEY'S bid for the US presidency failed because voters saw through him – as a candidate the man was a political charlatan.

On his second bid for the White House, Romney held nothing back – last week, a flip-flop; yesterday, a backtrack; today, a retreat; and tomorrow, a sidestep of what he had said last week or last year.

He needed to put Americans at ease about his vast wealth, but whenever he did his foot usually ended up in his mouth.

A sharply worded editorial in The Washington Post on Sunday argued that the only consistency in the Romney campaign had been the candidate's contempt for the electorate. But that he went so close to becoming president reveals more than we might have expected about the people and politics of the global superpower.

Romney: I have called to congratulate Obama

When one of his competitors for the Republican nomination had damned him as "a Massachusetts moderate", Romney had defended himself as "severely conservative". But across the life of this campaign he left a trail of confusion as to who was the real Romney – the arch-conservative trying to win over the party base and the Tea Party crazies during the Republican primaries or the laid-back Massachusetts moderate who reached out to independent voters in the closing weeks.

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Had Romney won the election, Americans seriously would be waking up tomorrow not having a clue about what to expect from their new leader.

Which of his contradictor tax reform positions might he hold to? Was he with immigrants, against them or really for them – all positions he had taken in the campaign? Where did he stand in the world – Kissingerian foreign policy realist or McCain-like hawk, as that Washington Post editorial demanded?

Health – indeed he was the author of the blueprint for Obamacare, but he would repeal it and then there was some of it he would keep – which? Abortion – yes, no and maybe ...

Just as remarkable was Romney's refusal to detail his policies, beyond repeating that he had a five-point plan. Seasoned tax-policy experts said the maths in his tax policy were simply impossible – but the candidate offered no explanation; he would end tax deductions, but he refused to say which; he had different ideas to Obama on young undocumented migrants — but he would not reveal them.

Two telling moments in the campaign went to the courage of Romney's convictions.

End of the road ... US Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney stands on stage with his wife, Ann. Photo: Reuters

The first, at the end of the primaries process, was when one of his staffers invoked the idea of an Etch A Sketch, on which a child does a drawing, shakes the thing up and the drawing disappears. After all the conservative nonsense to win the nomination, Romney would shake his Etch A Sketch policies to go after more moderate voters.

The second was a response to Romney's derisory quip that "even Jimmy Carter would have done it", when asked if he would made the same decision as Obama to authorise the mission that went after Osama bin Laden. In a newspaper op-ed, a former Carter aide reviewed the Romney policy record, before observing that Romney had never taken a courageous position on anything.

Romney might have challenged the diehard social conservatives who dominate his party.

Obama Wins

But he wimped it when the conservative radio loudmouth Rush Limbaugh called a young woman defending her right to contraception a slut; in the row over a Republican congressman's claim that pregnancy could not happen in a case of "legitimate" rape; and when one of his party rivals for the nomination declared that the iconic John F. Kennedy speech on the separation between church and state had made him sick.

"Even some of Romney's own campaign advisers confess they don't really know who he is," the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writes. "Is he the pragmatist who would curb Grover Norquist, John Bolton and Dan Senor — or the severe conservative who would let them run wild?" But quite apart from his policy gyrations, Republican post mortems will go to questions of the candidate's personality, his social awkwardness, his disdain for the media and his campaign strategy in what, for the GOP, was an election that was impossible to lose.

The candidate seemingly had a human story to reveal of himself in his religious life — but he was too awkward in telling it. He needed to put Americans at ease about his vast wealth, but whenever he did his foot usually ended up in his mouth.

He and his strategists knew full well that the Obama campaign would come after his record at Bain Capital — but even before Obama went after him, his Republican competitors for the nomination had smeared him real good as a vulture capitalist.

There is a perception that Romney surged in the closing weeks of the campaign, riding a strong showing in the first of three debates with Obama before cresting a wave of rank-and-file Republican energy that, depending on whose finger was on the pulse, did or did not falter before Hurricane Sandy pushed the campaign to the back of the media's and the nation's consciousness.

But blaming a hurricane for defeat does not cut it.

Often derided as a nation of idiots, American voters might have redeemed themselves in the eyes of the world – and it's safe to assume that a good number of those who ticked the box for Obama were among the 47 per cent who Romney wrote off as victim-types about whom he did not have to care.

One of the contenders for the GOP nomination who fell by the way was former Pennsylvania senator and holy roller Rick Santorum, who warned that Romney was the "worst Republican" for the party to stand against Obama.

If it's all about winning then Rick, it seems, was right.

216 comments

Good article. How can you get to the end of an election and ask what did the candidate stand for? What was his tax plan? How would he cut the deficit.

Obmama deserved 4 more years and got it!

Commenter

Steve

Location

Sydney

Date and time

November 08, 2012, 7:16AM

Yes, a good summary of why Romney lost when a better Republican candidate would have won in a time of high unemployment and continuing economic doldrums. Obama hasn't been a brilliant success, but he's been steady in the face of Republican blocking of many of his reforms. Let's hope he can get more cooperation and more action now.

Commenter

rudy

Date and time

November 08, 2012, 8:13AM

He lost the hispanics, then he lost the african americans, then he lost the unemployed (most layed off during the GFC.....not their fault) then he lost women via his right wing mates comments on abortion & rape. People could see he was not genuine.....sounds like someone we know.....hello Tony & Joe.

Commenter

Bazza

Date and time

November 08, 2012, 8:17AM

That was one of Mitt's major problems, he flip flopped so many times no one could be sure what he did, or did not, stand for. He came across as a man would tailor his message to whichever group he was addressing. The 47% video did not help him, he could not relate to the common folk and as it seems to be important in American political life, neither could his wife. It's true, even now he remains a figure shrouded in mystery and confusion.

Commenter

comment

Date and time

November 08, 2012, 8:19AM

Republicans don't know what they stand for at the moment with extreme elements like the Tea party having a strong influence, but you can see what the business community thinks of Obama.....US share market fell by a few hundred points last night. The US is a monetary basket case that has a way to go.......Obama, nice bloke....how good is he in turning the US around?...well with an extra few trillion dollars of debt over the last 4 years and no real progress....hmmmmm

Commenter

shemp

Location

melb

Date and time

November 08, 2012, 8:27AM

It's interesting to note that in the global wave of fevered, uninspired, undeliverable, narrow minded and shouting conservatism, common sense held out.

Let's hope Australians have as much common sense come the election next year.

Commenter

eyeroll

Location

Sydney

Date and time

November 08, 2012, 9:21AM

I think Republicans know what they stand for – they just can’t admit it out loud cos it’s exactly the same policies that Bush used to destroy the US economy first time round. They stand for the philosophy that benefiting big business and billionaires will some how ‘trickle down’ wealth to the masses. Even a nation stupid enough to vote for Bush (twice!) are not dumb enough to fall for this failed policy again. It’s as stupid a political philosophy as expecting Communism to work after the evidence of the fall of the USSR.

Let’s just hope that Australians are smart enough to be aware of this reality too and not vote for Abbott’s neo-con right wing policies (yes, we haven’t seen any official policies for the same reason Romney didn’t make his clear). Even if the Labor alternative isn’t great, it’s better than Abbott. Let’s hope Turnbull is the Lib’s leader soon so there is more than one party to vote for.

Commenter

QED

Date and time

November 08, 2012, 9:28AM

@shemp - The US economy needs reform to improve and Obama wants to reform it. Any President needs the cooperation of Congress to get his reforms through. The bloody-minded Republicans in Congress have refused to provide that cooperation and prefer instead to protect the super-rich from paying the taxes needed to reduce public sector debt, while being quite happy to see the debt mount through government bailouts to the private sector Obama had to provide in the wake of the Bush-led GFC. We'll soon see what the Republicans do next as the 'fiscal cliff' approaches.

Commenter

yeah-no

Date and time

November 08, 2012, 9:28AM

Just as it is for the GOP, it will be fascinating to see who the Democrats finally select as a candidate in the next US election. If Michelle Obama wanted to follow in Hillary Clinton's footsteps, I think MO would be a shoe in to be the first female US President picking up theblack, hispanic, asian and female vote - powerful combination. One suspects she would be even more adept at the Presidency than her husband.

Commenter

Tim of Altona

Date and time

November 08, 2012, 9:40AM

democrates were far better organised with buses to voting centres and money for black and hispanics to vote democrat and welfare society. but i think the markets have got it right, now a big chance of a second round world recession, uneployemt to stay at 8 percent or highher. It just shows how a good speaking voice and friendly face wins out over ability and experience these days. but hey care factor for me nil my money is safe

8 Nov
WASHINGTON: The election sorted out winners and losers, but it left intact a polarised governing structure in Washington that has been unable to produce much more than gridlock during the past couple of years.

8 Nov
NEW YORK: Democrats snatched Republican Senate seats in Indiana and Massachusetts and were poised to hold control of the Senate, handing Republicans a string of stinging defeats for the second campaign season in a row.